


Fools In Love

by purewanderlust



Series: Where Angels Fear to Tread [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, First Time, M/M, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 23:16:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3506366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purewanderlust/pseuds/purewanderlust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The brothers are reunited.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fools In Love

In twenty years of monsters and horror, nothing was quite as terrifying as waking up in a coffin. When Dean opened his eyes, there was nothing but suffocating blackness surrounding him. He made a startled noise and tried to sit up, clipping his head on the roof.

He was in a box. He was buried. Breathing shallowly through his nose, Dean worked his fingers into his pocket and thankfully, his lighter was still there. The light from the flame proved pretty definitively that he was in a coffin, but it didn’t look too sturdy. Swallowing nervously, he let the flame go out. He couldn’t remember what exactly was going on, but the most pressing issue right now was to get the hell out of the box.

Dean scooted all the way to one side of the box and braced his feet against the wall. He shoved off, slamming his shoulder against the opposite wall. The wood creaked and cracked, but didn’t give completely. He slammed his shoulder into it again and the the lid collapsed, dirt raining down on him. Dean squeezed his eyes and mouth tightly shut and shoved his fingers up through the splintered lid and into the dirt, desperately praying that he wasn’t buried too deep.

Luck must’ve been on his side because his hands broke through the surface and he felt fresh air. Dean scrabbled for purchase and hauled himself up out of the grave. He gasped, spitting the dirt out of his mouth before falling onto his back and breathing deeply.

Once he was out of the grave, the mystery of how he had gotten there in the first place came to the forefront of his mind.

He remembered the banshee. Fuck, he remembered dying, with Sam’s voice frantic in his ear as he faded out. But who had buried him in this shitty shallow grave and, more importantly, how was he able to claw his way out of it like something from a Bruce Campbell flick? There was something niggling at the back of his mind, like a dream you start to forget immediately when you wake up. Something had brought him back. Something supernatural. But it didn't seem too likely that whatever creature had done so had also shoved him into a pine box. 

After a few more minutes of lying in the grass watching the sun wheel overhead, Dean hauled himself to his feet. He needed to figure out what was going on, and that meant determining where he was, to start with.

Dean picked a direction and started walking.

*

It didn't take long for Dean to find something familiar. After trudging about two miles, by his best estimate, a creaky old farmhouse rose out of the distance. He recognized it immediately as the one where he'd encountered the banshee.

"What the fuck," he muttered to himself.

Approaching the house cautiously, Dean noticed something was different. When he'd been here before, there had been a palpable malice in the air, tension caused by the banshee's energy. It was gone now, and the house seemed harmless, just another abandoned building in an ocean of gently waving grass.

If the banshee was gone, that could only mean one thing: another hunter had been here. And if that were true, Dean reasoned, the same person had probably found his body and buried him. But what sort of hunter would’ve chosen to bury him, a stranger, when they knew perfectly well that a violent death like that was basically a one-way trip to vengeful spirit town. 

Unless it hadn’t been a stranger.

“Sam,” Dean ground out between his teeth. His brother would’ve known to burn his body, but the youngest Winchester had never been one to blindly follow instructions. “Goddamn kid.”

Dean circled the farmhouse, heading for the front porch. When he reached the front of the house, he stopped dead, taking a deep breath to calm himself. It wasn’t like he was surprised to see the empty space where the Impala had been parked, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like a bitch anyway. He hoped to god that Sam had been the one who’d found him, because if some other asshole hunter had his Baby, there was gonna be hell to pay.

There was going to be hell to pay for Sam, too, for putting himself in danger like this, but. Still.

Dean moved carefully up the front steps, stepping over the collapsed one second from the top, and peered in the front window. Even with the sun beating down outside, the inside was gloomy and dark and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. When they finally did, he could see the massive open space that was the main living room. There was a large dark patch where the wood was stained the color of rust, and there were drag marks in the dust leading away from the spot, though even those had started to be covered over in a thin layer of dust. Just how long had he been gone?

Suddenly panicked, Dean spun away from the door and stumbled down the steps into the yard. _Sam Sam Sam_ , his brain yelled at him, _you need to find Sam_.

If he remembered correctly, the nearest town was La Honda, just a few more miles north. He wondered--if Sam had been the one to find him, how pissed he must’ve been at how close Dean was to his safe and normal home. 

Well. What was done was done. Dean would cross that bridge when he came to it. Until then, he just had to get to town.

*

About an hour and a half later, Dean made it to town, sweat creeping uncomfortably down the back of his neck. He spotted the little cabin-like restaurant he remembered eating in before and headed inside. 

The air conditioning was blessedly cool on his skin and Dean dropped onto a bar stool with a sigh of relief. No one looked at him funny--there were barely three other people in the bar, and, as he’d noticed upon hauling himself out of the grave, he was dressed in non-bloody and tattered clothes (another point in the Sam-found-him column). He was a little dirty, yeah, and a stranger, but he suspected a place like this saw a lot of drifters.

“Gotta map I can borrow?” He asked the bartender, who’d been hovering nearby.

“Sure do, honey.” She answered, eyes tracking down in a casual display of interest that he’d seen a million times. Dean wondered what she’d say if she knew he’d been dead earlier this morning. “Nothin’ to eat?”

Dean grimaced. He’d discovered pretty immediately that he had no money, but that didn’t stop his stomach from rumbling. “Nah, I’m good.” The bartender shrugged and handed him a map she’d fished out from a drawer behind the bar. “Hey,” he asked, “What’s the date?" 

“The thirtieth." 

“Of September?”

She arched one eyebrow at him. “Of October.”

Dean tried to keep the shock off his face. “Yeah, of course. Don’t know what I was thinkin’.”

The bartender turned away and Dean shoved off his stool, taking the map with him. He had been dead a whole month.

He had to find Sam.

Out in the parking lot, Dean approached a beat-up turquoise hatchback, glancing up and down the street for any witnesses. There was no one around so he tried the door. Miraculously, it popped open, and Dean slid inside, sending up a thanks for small-town idealism. It only took him a few seconds to hotwire the car, and then he was turning northwest, following the route on his map towards Palo Alto.

*

Dean reached Palo Alto in record time, ditched the stolen car near the edge of the Stanford campus, and headed towards Sam’s apartment on foot. He hadn’t ever wanted Sam to know about his frequent trips to California to check up on him, but Dean figured the cat was out of the bag on that one by now. Besides, he found himself spurred on by the conviction that his brother was in some way in danger. Dean didn’t know what made him so sure, but he’d learned long ago to trust his instincts, even when it didn’t always make sense.

When Dean saw his Baby parked outside of Sam’s apartment building, he let out a huge sigh of relief that he didn’t even realize he’d been holding in. He resisted the urge to go check the car out to make sure it was okay, inside jogging towards the stairs towards Sam’s building. He took the stairs two at a time all the way up to the third floor.

Dean reached Sam’s apartment door and stopped, staring at it like it was a particularly vicious  monster. Dying phone call notwithstanding, this would be the first time Dean had talked to his brother in over two years. It would’ve been awkward enough without the whole dying-and-being-mysteriously-resurrected bit.

Drawing up some vestige of courage, Dean rapped on the door, rocking forward onto the balls of his toes.

There was no answer. Dean knocked again, straining to hear any movement from inside.

“Go ‘way!” Sam’s muffled voice out of nowhere made him jump. Dean frowned, and then tried the door, expecting it to be locked.

The handle turned easily under his hand and he pushed open the door. “What the fuck, Sam? What are you thinking, leaving a door unlocked like this?”

A lump of greyish blankets on the threadbare couch moved, Sam’s face appearing out from under them. He looked terrible, skinny and pale, rings under his eyes like bruises. “Knew a locked door wouldn’t stop you, if you decided to come.”

It wasn’t exactly the reunion Dean had been expecting. “Um, Sam. Are you okay?”

Sam snorted, but didn’t otherwise answer. Dean stepped fully into the room, closing the door behind him and latching it. For the first time, he took stock of the room. Piles of trash--old pizza boxes, expired newspapers, and Chinese carryout boxes--were stacked on the coffee table, surrounded by a host of miscellaneous mugs, some still with rotten dregs in the bottom. There was fine layer of grime on everything, as if the place hadn’t seen a good cleaning in weeks. The only light came in through the tiny windows; little slivers of glass littering the carpet like someone had decided to take a baseball bat to every lamp Sam owned.

Dean took it all in, a sinking feeling in his chest. "Sammy..."

"Don't, Dean," Sam said in a pained voice. "Please don't."

"Don't what?" Dean asked, cocking his head quizzically.

Sam peered up at him from his rat's nest of blankets, eyes shining with unshed tears. "Don't ask me to...put you to rest. I knew it was a bad idea not to burn your--your body when I found you, but I just couldn't do it. What makes you think I can now?"

Understanding hit Dean like a bullet between the eyes. "Sammy, I'm not a spirit, I'm alive."

It had the exact opposite effect Dean had been hoping for. Sam flinched as if he'd been struck and there tears finally brimmed over and starting running down his cheeks. When he spoke again, his voice was absolutely wrecked. "Dean, I found your body. I buried you!"

Dean held his hands out, placating. "I know, Sammy, I know, but--"

"No, you don't know!" Sam screamed, lurching up from the couch. He towered over his brother like he never had when they were kids, and it was Dean's turn to shrink back. "You have no _idea_ what I went through! You called me up in the middle of the day and fucking _died_ on the other end of the phone!

"I had to trace your cell to this horrible abandoned farmhouse, I had to find your body c--cold in a pool of blood. I had to banish a goddamn poltergeist before I could even get you out of the house!" He paced to one end of the room and back, running both hands through his hair, clutching it like he was going to start pulling it out by the fistful. 

"Sam--"

"I lost everything, Dean! It’s kind of hard to maintain a relationship or go to classes when the most important person in your world is just _gone_!"

Dean had been inching forward as his brother spoke and when he was close enough, he grabbed Sam by the wrists, gently prising his hands out of hair. "Sammy, I'm not gone, I'm right here."

Sam was shaking. "It's not possible, it can't be. You're just manifesting solidly because you don't remember dying."

Dean laughed, but it was a hollow sound. "Oh, I remember dying. It sucked, I don't recommend it." He released his brother's hands. "Let me prove it to you. Stay right there."

He kept his eyes on Sam as he backed into the kitchen, but his little brother was motionless. He looked like a broken wind-up toy, cast aside and directionless. It made Dean’s heart ache to see it.

He opened a couple of cupboards before he finally found a can of salt. Dean took it back into the living room and showed it to Sam.

“Ghosts and salt don’t mix, remember Sammy?” he said keeping his voice gentle. He opened the spout and poured some into his hand. “See?”

Sam’s eyes widened, flicking from Dean to the salt can and back.

The next thing Dean knew, he was slamming into the wall hard enough to knock the breath out of him. Sam’s hands were on him and for a moment, Dean was sure that he’d miscalculated and now his brother thought him an even more deadly monster.

But then Sam crushed their mouths together and destroyed that theory. He wouldn’t kiss a zombie, would he?

Immediately on the tail end of that bizarre thought, Dean realized that his baby brother was kissing him. He gasped, startled, and Sam’s tongue slid into his mouth as his hands slid from Dean’s shoulders up the sides of his neck and into his hair.

And the thing was, it was really good. Like, possibly the best kiss Dean had ever had good. With the one person he’d sworn he’d never touch. Oh God.

“Sam!” Dean yelped, putting both palms on his brother’s chest and shoving him back. “Dude, what the hell.” His heart was thudding out of control in his chest, and he could taste Sam on his mouth.

Sam didn’t seem daunted by the interruption. He grabbed one of Dean’s wrists, crowding him against the wall. “Oh God, Dean, you’re _alive_.” Before Dean could shove him away again, he was leaning in for a second kiss. Dean turned his head away at the last second, Sam’s lips only grazing the corner of his mouth. It didn’t phase Sam, who started to kiss his way down the column of Dean’s throat.

Dean bit back an appreciative groan and willed himself to uncurl his fingers from where they’d suddenly wound themselves in the front of his brother’s shirt. “Sam,” he said breathlessly, grabbing at the back of Sam’s shirt. He meant to pull his brother away, but then Sam started sucking on his pulse point and Dean found himself pulling him closer. “Ah, Sammy, wait, this isn’t--”

Sam pulled back, but not far, his eyes heavy and intent. “This is _exactly_ what I want, always have. Don’t try to tell me you don’t feel the same way.” His hands were still trembling, skating over Dean’s hips and then up the back of his shirt.

Dean shivered, goosebumps rippling down his spine. “Sam, this ain’t right. I’m supposed to--” 

“I swear to God, if you say you’re supposed to look out for me or take care of me I will deck you right here and now.” Sam said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “Dean, you died. I haven’t seen you in almost four years and I’m really not in the mood to pretend that this isn’t between us anymore.”

Dean shook his head, even though every part of him was aching for Sam’s touch. He’d wanted this and resisted it for so much longer than he was willing to admit, even to himself. It had always seemed impossible that Sam could want the same thing. Even now, with his brother looking down at him, eyes pleading, Dean couldn’t imagine that this could ever be okay. “Sam it’s incest. That’s so far outside the realm of taking care of you that it’s on another planet!”

Sam didn’t flinch. “Dean, look around you. I’ve been falling apart. Probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer if you hadn’t come through the door. Why are you having such a hard time accepting that you’re the only thing that means anything to me?”

“You left.” The words were out of Dean’s mouth before he realized it and he immediately wished he could take it back. Sam’s eyes widened in hurt, then understanding and he took Dean’s chin in his hand and forced Dean to look at him.

“I left because I couldn’t stand the thought of one day watching you die. Because I wanted to make my own choices and I knew that I never would have that freedom with Dad. I left because I care about you so much it scares me sometimes.” Sam leaned closer, his breath warm on Dean’s face. “There were so many reasons I left, and none of them were your fault. Dean, fuck, if this fiasco has made anything clear, it’s that I can’t live without you.” He suddenly released Dean and took a step back, putting a couple feet between them. “If you don’t want this, I’m not going to push it. But I’m not going to leave again, either.”

Abruptly, the choice was in Dean’s hands. He felt like he was standing on the edge of a very high cliff; so high that he couldn’t see whether the bottom was jagged rocks that would dash him to pieces or not. But Sam was looking at him so earnest and open and Dean remembered that the only thing he’d wanted when he was dying was to hear his brother’s voice again.

“Yeah, okay, yes,” he stammered, face heating. “I--I want this. I want y--you.”

Sam was on him instantly, an arm around his waist and his lips pressed to Dean’s. Dean opened up for him this time and Sam pressed him into the wall and kissed him and kissed him until Dean thought he might die from it. He grabbed at whatever parts of Sam he could reach; his hair, his shoulders, his ass and Sam rocked against him with a stifled whine.

Dean decided he wanted to hear more of that noise, so he shoved his hands down the back of Sam’s sweats, grabbing his ass and pulling their hips snug. Gratifyingly, Sam made the noise again and Dean grinned against his mouth.

Suddenly, Sam’s hand was at the front of Dean’s jeans, thumb catching on the button. “Can I?” he whispered.

“Fuck, Sammy, yes,” Dean groaned and before he could blink, Sam had popped the button and pulled the zipper down and was wrapping his hand around Dean’s cock. “Oh, God.” Sam’s hand was so big and when he gave an experimental pull, Dean’s head thunked back against the wall and he made a high-pitched appreciative noise.

Dean wanted to return the favor, but Sam’s hand on him was getting in the way of his higher brain power. It was all he could do to just hold on. Luckily, Sam seemed to be on top of it because he shoved his sweats halfway down and shoved his own cock up against Dean’s and then wrapped his fist around both, rocking his hips forward with every pull.

Dean wrapped his arms around Sam’s neck and kissed him again, deep and dirty, until they were just panting into each other’s mouths while Sam brought them closer and closer to the edge with his wonderful giant hand.

“Fuck, Dean, I love you so goddamn much,” he gasped, twisting his wrist and Dean was over the edge and gone, the world whiting out as pleasure rushed through his body. He fumbled a hand down to help Sam and only got in one pull before Sam’s whole body sprang taut and he was coming too.

They stood there for a long moment, clinging to each other. Dean let the wall take most of his weight, feeling like his legs could give out from under him at any moment. Sam apparently felt the same way, because he looped his arms around Dean’s neck and clung to him, swaying on his feet.

“So, uh,” Sam said, all of his earlier eloquence disappearing in the face of what had just happened. “That was…” he trailed off, fear clearly visible in his slanted hazel eyes.

He was waiting for Dean, trying to gauge the situation against his brother’s feelings, like he always had. It made something gentle and warm start up in Dean’s heart to know that hadn’t changed.

“That was _awesome_ ,” he said instead, putting on a leer. “Apparently dying didn’t put a damper on my magnetic sex appeal.”

Sam’s expression changed immediately to one of fond annoyance, but Dean could still see the fear and hurt lurking just behind it. He couldn’t express himself, though, it’d never been his strong suit. “Sammy…” he sighed. “Let’s just get you to bed, okay? I think you need to rest.”

Sam beamed at him and it was like the sun coming out after a thunderstorm. Dean didn’t need to say it; Sam already knew. “Come with me?” he asked.

“Wouldn’t dream of being anywhere else.”

*

They left Palo Alto the next morning. There hadn’t really been much of a discussion, just a quick scouring of the apartment for any of Sam’s things he wanted to take with him. In bed the night before, Dean had told Sam how he hadn’t heard from Dad in weeks. Sam agreed that they needed to find him, and also wanted to figure out what had brought Dean back from the dead. Dean found he didn’t really care as long as it meant he could be here beside his brother, but he nodded, running his fingers across Sam’s forehead to smooth out the frown lines before he leaned in to kiss him again.

So they took off in the Impala at sunrise, headed towards the last town Dean had known their dad to be working in. Sam in the passenger seat, reading the map while Robert Plant crooned from the speakers; it was just like old times.

Well. Mostly. Dean had a hand on Sam’s thigh and every now and again his brother would look up at him and flash him that brilliant smile that made Dean’s heart go tight in his chest. Dean smiled back, thinking that for the first time in a long time, things were good. 

“I think we need to take the next exit up ahead,” Sam said, pointing on the map. Dean nodded, taking the turn off his brother had indicated, bringing them one step closer to finding Dad. And now that he had Sam with him, Dean knew nothing could stop them.

They had work to do.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who read this little series! I didn't really expect to write it; I'm in the middle of rough-draft week for [acespnminibang](http://acespnminibang.tumblr.com) (which you should also check out) but sometimes a story just has to be written. I appreciate those of you who took the time to read and comment. <3


End file.
